Holocaust survivor warns Polish leaders over Nazi groups

AP-EU-Poland-Nationalism

Wojciech Strozyk, ASSOCIATED PRESS

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A Holocaust survivor told people at a counter-rally held Saturday in a Polish city where far-right groups marched a week earlier that Poland's leaders tolerate organizations with Nazi-inspired ideologies.

Some 1,500 people gathered in Gdansk, the cradle of Poland's pro-democracy Solidarity movement in the 1980s, to protest the convention the far-right groups held in the city and to alert Poland's government to the growing threat of fascism.

Magdalena Wyszynska, 96, a Jewish survivor of the Lvov ghetto, told the crowd that the lack of reaction by Poland's right-wing government could suggests its leaders are "more concerned for the widening of their electorate than for our security."

Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz, who organized the rally Saturday, said it was a "shame" that many Poles haven't learned from history and don uniforms of nationalist and fascist organizations that sowed hatred before and during World War II.